by Jack Lindsay
The principle uniting both these objects with the designs is that of the continuous looped line, represented in the case of the pavitram by the knotted grass-ring, and in that of the Brahma-mudi by the knotted cord. Just as in Malekula an examination of the chief mystery-play in the labyrinthine series revealed the ogre-hero to be characterised by the immense number of coils of underground creeper tied round his loins, being the Malekulan representation of what we in Europe have come to refer to as Ariadne’s clue, the thread by means of which the prisoner finds his way out of the labyrinth, so I venture to suggest that in the knotted grass or cord, associated as it is with the basic elements of the South Indian threshold-designs, we may most probably be in the presence of the same symbol of escape from the physical as well as the spiritual labyrinth. (Layard)
The designs are also used for magical purposes unconnected with doors. Thus an eight-snake design with central star-like figure is drawn by a Pulluvan, whose caste is said to be descended from the snake-deity. On the appointed day he draws the design in rice-flour on the floor; the spaces between the coils are filled in with burnt rice-husk, turmeric, powdered green leaves, and so on. The Pulluvan plays on his earthen pot-drum. A seated woman gradually grows possessed and quivers, shaking her wild locks; moving backwards and forwards she rubs away the snake figure with the coconut flowers. It may be thus necessary to rub out the snake as many as a hundred times, prolonging the rite over several weeks. Each time the snake is destroyed, one or two men with torches perform a dance to the Pulluvan’s music. In the rite worship is performed to the god Ganesha.
We find maze types called forts which are close to the Cretan design for a labyrinth and which bring out the defensive aspect of the pattern. They are met incised on a house-wall; and a labyrinth of small stones occurs near the ruined city of Kundani. Similar ones are found in megalithic areas such as Wisby in Gothland or on Wier Osland in the Gulf of Finland. The tattooed designs are always done by women; they are connected with Ganesha like the threshold designs and with averting the evil eye; they are regarded by some persons as a ‘passport for the forgiveness of sins and for admission to heaven’. In connection with the ancient near-eastern labyrinths three types of dancing were carried on: the Dance of Lamentation; the Protective Dance performed by armed men; the Fertility Dance, linked with the sacred marriage, performed by men and women. The encircling dance seems the most ancient and potent.[366]
A Malekulan dance of the Seniang district shows the sort of mystery play and myth that could arise from the labyrinthine dance. The performers consist of the principal dancer; a man called the Hawk, a man with bow and arrow (the man who shoots with the ne-leng), two bridegrooms, two more bowmen, two others called ne-tes-kew, another pair called man-yeosir, two brides, and a group of fifteen dancers called ‘the mouth of the ne-leng’. The first two syllables of ne-tes-kew mean the ‘sea’, so that we seem to be dealing with a death-crossing of the sea; man-yeosir has as first syllable a root meaning magic or bird, birds having their religious connotation, especially through the hawk and other strong fliers. The drawing here given shows the positions at the beginning; the lower end, where a spectator in the lodge would be sitting, represents the outside or normal world; the most sacred characters or aspects are at the further end. There we see the bridegrooms and two magicians with two bowmen guarding them; at the side is the man who shoots with the ne-leng guarding the sanctuary and its inmates. Outside these stand the main body of dancers facing the sanctuary; they represent the pattern of the labyrinth and thus are a further defence or barrier. Outside these again, in the normal world, stands the main dancer, who represents the spirit of the dead man about to attempt its journey, together with the Hawk (the introducer, the man already initiated).
The two magicians begin, dancing slowly forwards with stiffly held arms swung back and out in a leisurely motion, repeating a chant in which occurs the term ni-temes (spirit of the dead). They pass to the right of the two ferrymen, between the fourth and fifth column columns of the main body, round the dead man, back to the main body, threading their way through the fourth, second and third columns, and on to their first position, where they continue to dance. (The two magicians or priests, with the word ‘spirit’ on their lips, cross the water represented by the two ferrymen, advance through the labyrinth and approach the neophyte, then return through the labyrinth and over the waters.)
Next the bridegrooms act. As each advances, he makes a forward-plunging movement with an arrow. Singing they approach the screen behind which are the women. From a small opening in it their wives step out. Each woman is bent, crouching, and holds her hands between her thighs, rubbing a strongly-scented leaf between her palms. They take their places behind their husbands, still in the same pose, and follow them with quick short steps. The two men thus accompanied pass to the left of the ferrymen, between the first and second column of the main body, round the neophyte, and thread their way back through the other columns of the main body to their first position. (Both arrow-gestures and rubbings between the thighs express copulation or marriage: a sacred marriage since it occurs within the sanctuary. The pairs, after thus copulating, cross the waters and the labyrinth to visit the neophyte, then return.) Next the bowmen, with bow-strings taut, pass between the ferrymen, through the main body, round the neophyte, and back again. (We thus have the three stages of a procession headed by the priests, followed by the bridal couples and their armed guards the procession emerges from the sanctuary, the spiritworld, crosses the waters and the labyrinth, and shows itself to the neophyte.)
Now the Hawk dances down the ground, flapping his arms, till he faces the main body, where he sings a song, in which the word mbal, sacrifice, is heard. (He stands for the initiated introducer who offers up a sacrifice on behalf of the novice, to gain him right of entry.) After that the two ferrymen advance and go through the main body to the neophyte as the bowmen have done. (Apparently they signify that he now has the right to cross the waters.)
The dramatic conflict begins. The man with the ne-leng comes forward, draws his bow, and pretends to shoot at the main body. They back away. He slackens his bow-string and they again advance. This action is repeated for some time. (The man’s song begins kevini ne-sap, ‘he who shoots at the sap’: Temes Sav-sap, the Guardian Ghost.) He is battling with the Ghost and the host that represent the turns of the labyrinth. (The meaning of the episode seems to be that the maze defences are so strong that those without the clue are forced to attempt a violent entry. A myth tells how a dead man, ignorant of the maze design called the Path, went back to the living world for his bow and arrows, with which he killed the Ghost, so that the stone on which she sat crashed into the sea. We may compare the hell-harrowing tales of the Greeks, especially those of the great bowman Herakles.)
The attack is foiled. The neophyte at last advances singing a song that indicates his hope of everlasting felicity with the two chief persons in the sanctuary. With this song he threads the columns of the labyrinth, the guardians of which, now fully identified with him, form into a single-line procession and visit the other characters. The latter in turn join the procession till they form one line, when the neophyte, now initiate and dance-leader, disperses them.
In another dance we meet two Hawks: the Flyer-from-place-to-place and the Pouncer-on-its-prey. The first threads the lines of the main body of dancers; the second follows the same course up to the point of line-threading, then begins jumping and threatening, retraces his steps along the line, then threads his way between the lines. At last, with arms still outstretched like a swooping bird, he dashes into the midst of the square. The group of dancers shuffle and cower in a terrified knot, while he stands with outstretched arms in their midst to his full height. Two bowmen then appear from the opposite sides of the ground. A series of mock-fights occurs. At one point the main body of dancers breaks into two groups, each of which follows a bowman; then they reunite to accompany the two bowmen off the ground. Here the maze dance concentrates on the th
eme of conflict; under attack the maze breaks up but finally reachieves its dense defensive form.
These two Malekulan maze dances show how the ritual bases could supply the forms and imagery for themes of the sacred marriage, the passage into new levels or dimensions of life, the conflict of opposites. With the maze as the fort or impregnable stronghold, themes of siege, attacks on walls, breaching of defences, could easily develop. The imagery of the Maiden Castle persisted in popular sources in Europe well into the medieval period, when it appeared in the symbol of the Castellum Virginis, the fort of the faithful which was also the body of the Virgin Mary. The final form appears in the City of Mansoul in Bunyan’s Holy War.
Till recently sand patterns were made on doorsteps in parts of northern England. As for the dances, we may note:
the remarkable similarity with our own Morris-dances, not only in the ankle-rattles corresponding to the Morris-bells, but also in the linear formation common to both, with the roles of St George and hobbyhorse corresponding to those of the solo-dancers in the Seniang drama. In both areas the Morris, or maze-dance, and the mumming-play go hand in hand; the Morris, if the analogy be right, representing the labyrinth, and the mumming-play representing the doings of the mythological personages within, while the horned dancers of Abbots Bromley are thus seen to be not far removed from the bull-headed Minotaur. (Layard)
But, even if we see an ultimate affinity, we must not look for any simple line of descent. It is worthwhile noting however a maze in Wales called Caer Droia. Caer is Camp, Droia seems derived from a Celtic root -tro, turn, revolve, stir, also plough. Connected words have the meaning of curve, screw, twist, converse. The Latin tro-are may be compared. We meet the same complex of meanings as we noted in connection with the spiral, with the name of Troy.
There was even, we may add, something of a labyrinth or maiden-castle about the Plane Grove at Sparta in which the epheboi (young men in the tribal grade-sense) carried out contests, and near which Helen had her shrine. The name Platanistas, says Pausanias, came from ‘the unbroken ring of tall planes growing round it. The place itself where it’s the custom for the epheboi to fight, is surrounded by a moat just like an island in the sea. You enter it by bridges. On each of the two bridges stand images — on the one side Herakles, on the other a likeness of Lykourgos’ the great initiate-hero and the legendary lawgiver said to have laid down the contest regulations. The lads first sacrificed a puppy by night at the Phoibaion near Therapne, while they set trained boars fighting. ‘The company whose boar wins generally gains the victory in the Plane-Grove.’ They cast lots during the night ‘to decide by which entrance each band is to enter’. In the fights they used hands, kicked, bit, gouged out eyes, charged violently and knocked one another into the water. The ‘unbroken ring’ of trees, then the water-ring with two bridges (each with a guardian or presiding statue), suggest a definite sort of ‘impregnable enclosure’. The bridges were apparently at opposite sides of the moat, not in a zigzag line of approach; but if we knew more how a passage was made through the trees, synecheis (continuous and close), and how it was related to the bridges, we would be better able to pronounce on the nature of the system. But even from the bare account we have a structure suggestive of a simple labyrinthine or maiden-castle kind.[367]
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We see then that Ariadne is the guardian of the entrance to the Cave of the Labyrinth; and her dance, like those of the Malekulans, is a sacred marriage, an initiation and a maze pattern mapping out the path between the living and the dead — the path into her own body, and out of it. She is the earth-mother from whom men come and to whom they come, and whom in some sort they enter when they enter the body of any woman. More, we see that the labyrinth into which Theseus enters to kill the monster, from which he emerges as possessor of Ariadne, is symbolically the same as Troy, the holy maze-city, which is one with the body of the guardian goddess. Though Athena is formally that goddess, with her palladion and its surrogate Kassandra, for the purposes of the siege myth Helen has displaced her; Athena has even become one of the attackers. Helen is at the heart of the maze, the turnings: the desired prize, the earth-mother, the divine tree, the otherworld-bride. Menelaos, penetrating into the bowels of the city and rupturing its sacred veil or hymen, kills Deiphobos and comes out with the goddess-bride, just as Theseus does after killing the Minotaur.
The Thread of Ariadne and the Fillet of Helen have essentially the same meaning; each represents a line of force, a link that vitally unites the young man with the sources of life, and makes possible his emergence on a new level. The fillets hang from Helen’s wrist and bind her to the divine tree; for the worshipper they are threads of communication with her daimonic force. The thread on the Cornuto bowl leaps out of Ariadne’s breasts to provide the guiding pattern of liberating movement for Theseus. The two types to which the Malekulan designs of continuous line can be reduced represent the path traced through the intricacies of the death passage and the bodily form of the lord of the underworld. We noted the Humbaba-type masks, perhaps used as oscilla, found in Helen’s own world at Sparta; we must remember that in the Epic of Gilgamesh Humbaba is the great demon that the hero has to defeat if he is reach the spirit world.
Burns tells us of a Celtic thread custom on Hallowe’en, called Throwing the Clue or the Blue Clue, which combines the uniting thread, love-consummation and craft process (clew and kiln): ‘Whoever would, with success, try this spell, must strictly observe these directions: steal out, all alone, to the kiln, and, darkling, throw into the pot a clew of blue yarn; wind it into a new clew off the old one; and towards the latter end, something will hold the thread; demand, “Wha hauds?” ie who holds? and answer will be returned from the kiln-pot, by naming the christian and surname of your future spouse.’
In the last resort then we can make out the same ritual pattern behind both Helen and Ariadne, however differently the elements have been put together. With Ariadne the ritual aspect is much closer to the surface; with Helen it has been deeply buried, so that we must make this sort of prolonged analysis if we are to disinter it.
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As a final point, we can now explain why the Moirai as Fates were spinners. Plinius tells us that in Italy in early days it was taboo for women to carry their spindles in public and that all weaving or spinning had to be done in secret. The crafts were a female mystery. All processes of transformation in their origins and for long after were part of the mystery lore of a fraternity or cult-association; the way in which they laid hold of matter in one state and changed into another state (or new form) was felt to involve dangerous as well as valuable potencies, which had to be controlled by a strict system. The change of states or forms was felt to be analogous to the changes brought about by initiation tests and ordeals; matter in its changes was undergoing, it seemed, a similar sort of test and renewal. Spinning and weaving changed the mess of flax or wool into a thread and the thread into a patterned stuff. Especially the spinning gyre was a mystery, which was equated with the birth-gyre or the thrust of the penis into the rounded hole of the female body; the thread was equated with the navel-string. So we get the Moirai or the Norns who spin the life-thread and cut it at the crucial moment (now death not birth). The two Roman birthfates, Postvorta and Antevorta (Before-turner, After-turner, from vertere) have roots ultimately cognate with the Anglo-Saxon wyrd (fate) and the Germanic term for the spindle. Volva, vulva, the Latin for womb, has the same root as volvere, turn round and about. The Latin turbo was applied to spinning-top, spindle, and the cone or rhombos used for whirling in magic rites and in the mysteries. We see the same complex of ideas, emotions, sensations which we noted in the spiral. (About 1912 I saw chalked up on a wall near a brothel in Brisbane, Queensland, the quatrain: ‘Penny a look, tuppence a feel, thrippence a go on the hairy wheel.’) The vase painting which showed Ariadne spinning had intuited the deep meaning of her thread.
But while the thread in friendly hands can save, it can kill if the Fates are affronted. In an Irish ta
le of Finn the heroes lose their powers through contact with the hasps of yarn which three spirit-women are reeling lefthandwise in front of a cave. ‘The hags transported them into black mysterious holes, into dark perplexing labyrinths.’[368]
